The Painter and the Wild Swans - Softcover

Claude Clement

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140546839 ISBN 13: 9780140546835

Publisher: Puffin, 1993

Synopsis

Transfixed by the beauty of a passing flock of white swans, a Japanese painter finds that he cannot work until he sees them again.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, French (translation)

From School Library Journal:

Kindergarten-Grade 3 Although rich and successful, Teiji abandons his landscapes and portraits after the sight of a flock of wild swans in flight leaves him unable to paint anything else. His quest to find the elusive swans ends in apparent defeat and deathbut at the moment when he realizes that such beauty cannot be captured, that it is enough to see it, he becomes a swan himself. This poetic idea is at least as old as William Blake (and the folktale motifs, of course, much older), but as the themes seem naturally Japanese, the setting is appropriate. The paintings, in cool tones so modulated that they seem at first monochromatic, are refined almost to preciosity. Swan forms blend Escher-like into fog, steam, snow, clouds; the results are elegant but mannered. At times the pictures don't correspond exactly to the text, but the appeal of this self-consciously artistic book is decidedly towards more sophisticated (even adult) readers, who might not mind the small discrepancies. Patricia Dooley, formerly at Drexel University, Philadelphia
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Puffin
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0140546839
• ISBN 13: 9780140546835
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Frederic Clement